Shadowlands, the Movie: Part 1

CS Lewis, in response to Harry about Joy Gresham: "Not my wife. No, how could she be? I'd have to love her, wouldn't I? She'd have to be more important to me than anything in the World. I'd have to be suffering the torments of the damned. The thought of losing her..."

CS Lewis, in his sermons about pain: "Pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

Write about these quotes, or other ones that particularly stood out to you. Reference and quote from the three other works that we've read this semester; what C.S. Lewis seems to be expressing about love, pain, and/or any other motif/idea that comes to mind.

The Great Divorce Chapters 11-the end

Presentation Proposals

Please list:
1. Members in group
2. Project proposal, to include format of project. Please be as specific as possible!

More information:

The project proposal should be a reflection of and response to various topics we have discussed in our three books. Presentations should be 5-10 minutes. The day of, you will need to turn in a hard copy of your presentation.

This will need to be at least 800 words. If you are doing a skit, for example, you will need to turn in a script of the skit. If you have written letters to supplement The Screwtape Letters, you will need to turn this in. You can also write an explanation/preface to your Screwtape Letters to count as part of the 800 words.

The Great Divorce Chapters 6-10

The Great Divorce Chapters 1-5

What sort of society does one get in Lewis’ depiction of hell?  Feel free to incorporate discussion of the characters that appear, and what vices they represent.

Week 8 Reflections - Screwtape Letters 25-End, Screwtape Proposes a Toast

Over the course of The Screwtape Letters, the state of the patient's soul fluctuates as he experiences a conversion, doubt, dangerous friendships, war, love, and finally, in death, oneness with God. What major strategies does Screwtape use to tempt the patient into the Devil's camp? Why do these temptations fail? In what ways can the patient be seen as an everyman?


or/and


In spite the patient's triumph over temptation, his glorious entrance to Heaven-"the degradation of it!-that this thing of earth and slime could stand upright and converse with spirits" (p.122)-Screwtape does not lose faith in his own cause. Why do you think Lewis chose to end the book in this ambiguous light? Why is Screwtape sustained by "the conviction that our Realism, our rejection (in the face of all temptations) of all silly nonsense and claptrap, must win in the end"? (p. 124). What warning is implied in the book's ending? In what ways does The Screwtape Lettersspeak to contemporary moral and spiritual issues both within and outside of the Christian Church?


(from HarperCollins)

Week 7 Reflections - The Screwtape Letters 17-24

Lewis exhibits throughout his writings an uncanny sense of human nature and a style capable of brilliant aphorism: "Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury"; "Gratitude looks toward the past and love to the present; fear, avarice, lust, and ambition look ahead", to cite just two examples. Where else inThe Screwtape Letters do you find universal statements about human nature? Do these statements accurately reflect not just a Christian ethos but the workings of human psychology more generally?


or


Love is an important theme in The Screwtape Letters. Describing the human idea of love and marriage, Screwtape tells Wormwood: "They regard the intention of loyalty to a partnership for mutual help, for the preservation of chastity, and for the transmission of life as something lower than a storm of emotion". Screwtape is also confounded by God's love for man, which he grants as real but irrational. What is Lewis saying, in the book as a whole, about human and divine love?


(from HarperCollins Reading Guide)